Disruption among the competition benefits TigerRisk

TigerRisk Partners’ international business—centred on London—is growing fast. In 2019, there were approximately 40 staff, now it’s approaching 70. People and talent are being added at every corner. One of the secrets of  TigerRisk’s success is perhaps the raft of difficulties faced by other brokers in the mergers and acquisitions (M&A) landscape.

James Few, chief executive officer London at TigerRisk Partners, declined to comment on the failed Aon and Willis deal, but he did admit that TigerRisk has benefited from disruption.

“If we’re honest with ourselves, that has been accelerated in its time frame by difficulties elsewhere,” said Few, talking about the growth of the broker.

Speaking to the Re/insurance Lounge, Intelligent Insurer’s digital hub for interviews, debates and panel discussions, Few added: “Growth has never been a problem for TigerRisk, but that has accelerated recently and I think part of the reason is because of difficulties at our competitors.”

Talent at the fore

TigerRisk has been able to attract a lot of high-quality talent, said Few, although he added that this has always been the case. Most recently, the broker entered the global trade credit, surety and political risk (TCSPR) line, boosting its ranks with hires from Aon and Willis Re.

Phil Bonner and James Loggie, the respective former heads of TCSPR at Aon and Willis Re, are currently on 12 months “gardening leave”, but once that concludes, Few is confident that TigerRisk will have “what we would argue are the leading global intermediaries for that particular speciality”.

“ TigerRisk has entered this specialised class because it’s a growing area, a specialty line where we can genuinely compete with the best if we get the right talent—and we are able to attract the right talent,” he said.

TigerRisk’s business model has always been focused on speciality added value, he explained. “That’s how we compete with the larger firms. We will bring in the world’s best talent and the world’s best analytics for those products we want to compete in.”

Although Few remains tight-lipped about the next speciality lines the broker is planning to enter, he noted that TigerRisk is keen to expand further into Latin America and Asia. On the European side, he said: “We’ve been here for three years, but we haven’t invested much in terms of numbers of people to support that interesting and large marketplace. But we have now, so you’ll see us grow in Europe as well.”

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Renewals, rates and risk

Turning to the next renewals, Few explained that the market has been difficult to read.

“If you think about what’s happened in recent times with the catastrophe losses of 2017/18, the pandemic, investment returns at historical lows, and lots of uncertainty around poorly modelled perils or less-understood perils, there’s been a lot of attritional loss activity,” he said.

Few added that this activity has led to a hardening of rates, but without a shortage of capacity in most areas. There has been some hardening, but this focuses on areas that had losses, and the hardening hasn’t stuck for as long as some might expect.

He continued: “There is capacity but there has been a reaction, whereby carriers charge a bit more money for that capacity in areas which have seen more loss activity.

“There are very large parts of the market that have not suffered losses—the industry still offers quite a decent return to investors relative to other asset classes. As an industry, we remain attractive to capital despite a difficult period for results in certain areas.”

According to Few, the reality is that the market offers a reasonable return for “practitioners playing within it”. He hasn’t witnessed an excessive amount of capital withdraw from the market and “while you have an abundance of capital, there’s going to be a reasonable pricing environment”, he noted.

Although we are approaching what tends to be the busiest time of year for the re/insurance industry in the run up to January 1, it’s still only September.

“This could be an interesting period of time,” said Few, adding that many events have already hit carriers.

“There’s a lot of risk to run. It will be interesting to see how the rest of this year pans out, while we’re planning renewal discussions,” he said.

“If we do see some more loss activity, that could put strain into the system. If we don’t, will buyers be back in an advantageous position again by the end of 2021?”

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